Congratulations, you survived the thrilling experience of the Pulse conference in Orlando last week! :) I'm Tiffany Winman, the IBM Pulse community program manager, and I hope your Pulse experience was a magical one. ;) Now that the conference is over, you can stay in touch, in tune, and in sync--as Al likes to say--by being part of the ongoing online Pulse community. Managing contacts you made at PulseYou can manage Pulse contacts you made and help others find you by following these steps:

Send a colleague invitation to your Pulse contact (click the invitation link under the name in the person's profile)

Sharing pictures and videosYou can share photos and videos on our Pulse group in Flickr. See sampling below. We know some of you still have some great Hootie and community pics out there! :) Follow these Flickr instructions if you're willing to share with the group.

Quick note to those of you who were brave enough to do a "live stories from Pulse" video moment: I'm still uploading these to YouTube, and will send out notices to our online Pulse community once I have them done. A big thank you for your participation!

Providing feedback on the conferenceYou can also help make the Pulse conference even better in 2009 or simply have some fun by sharing your favorites at Pulse by responding to one or more of the forum topics below.

Whats Next: The beat of Service Management goes on- and goes green on day three at Pulse!

Join us as we explore how Tivoli is setting industry trends in
delivering industry specific solutions more efficiently and effectively to help
organizations meet business objectives. Steve Sams will shine the spotlight on
IBMs Project Big Green, which is defining leadership in data center energy
efficiency by helping organizations cut operational costs by 50% while
positively impacting the earths environment. Alan Ganek and Chris OConnor
will continue the green theme, emphasizing the need to manage energy related
capital and operational costs in the context of risk and delivery of IT and
services and featuring a Green Data Center IBM Business Partner panel. Ron May
of DTE joins our IBM speakers to share how IBM Service Management helped DTE
standardize processes and work practices across their various business units
with a single platform, enabling enterprise-wide visibility into both assets
and services to drive corporate performance. In conclusion of our Day 3 General
Session, we are pleased to welcome our diamond sponsor, Alcatel-Lucent, for a
discussion of their successful partnership with IBM.

Dont miss this session for an
inside look at how IBM Service Management is helping our clients adopt and
integrate technologies and processes to overcome business challenges in a
changing world.

The momentum continued at Pulse on Tuesday beginning with the
exciting sounds Metropolis, welcoming Pulse go-ers to Day 2 of the General
Session with a chorus of Lets See How Far We Go. .. a phrase that would reveal the spirit of the day.

Al Zollar started the session off, which took on the theme of how
the convergence of business and IT can enable organizations to optimize
investments, accelerate business growth and manage risk and compliance. Al
introduced Robert Le Blanc, who illustrated the now is the time for IT to
transform processes via the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and how Service
Management is the key to that successful transformation. Like Liz Smith the day
before, Robert cited the 2008 CEO Survey feedback that reflects consensus
that the market is now more responsive with more flexible environments and that business model innovation is what will drive success to the next level.Robert further supported this with success
stories from Aetna and Boeing, underscoring how service management is critical
for SOA success.

Next Al introduced Laura Sanders who talked about the IBM Service
Management roadmap with linkages to SOA across all segments and shared her
insight on the integration of the Tivoli portfolio and new product
announcements. Laura invited members of her team to the stage who demonstrated
how the Tivoli Enterprise Portal can be used to gain Visibility, Control, and
Automation to discover and mitigate an SLA violation risk in an enterprise.
Laura closed her presentation by urging attendees to come to the Guru Galaxy to
say, Show me the Code! to the experts during this 2 hour Q&A social
event.

Al took the stage again to introduce Christoph Locher of Swiss
Reinsurance Company, a loyal IBM customer. Christof provided an IBM client
perspective of IBM Service Management, outlining end-to-end change management
within the infrastructure of a premier financial enterprise. Christof
congratulated Al Zollar for the decision to acquire Maximo, emphasizing that he
now is relieved with the support and services his business has been provided.

Finally, our featured guest speaker, John Wood, was introduced by
Al Zollar. John Wood is founder and CEO of the award-winning non-profit
organization, Room to Read, and author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the
World. John shared how one vacation from Microsoft introduced him to poverty
stricken Nepalese school. When John expressed dismay at the utter lack of
appropriate books for educating the children, the school headmaster challenged
and inspired him by suggesting that perhaps one day he might return with books.
John did return, and kept returning. Combining his passion for worldwide
literacy with the discipline of a successful global business, John led Room to
Read in establishing over 5,180 libraries, building 442 schools, funding over
4,036 long-term scholarships for girls, publishing 2 million books and also
donating over 2 million books all in all impacting the lives of over 1.7
million students worldwide.

If you missed the Pulse Opening session you missed a movie, a play, results from the 2008 CEO Survey with some insights of future industry trends, and some powerful inspiration . . . here is the recap:

Over 4000 experienced the excitement of unlocking innovation with the Visibility, Control, and Automation of IBM Service Management at the Pulse Opening Session! Al Zollar opened the session with a mini movie about Tivoli.After the movie, Al introduced Steve Mills who took the stage to provide insight on how only IBM can provide short and long term solutions with the breadth and depth of the unmatched IBM portfolio of solutions. Then Al Zollar took the stage again to address the industrialization of IT, explaining how IBM Service Management helps ensure cost effective, quality service delivery that is business aligned and environmentally aware. Then Chris OConnor took the stage to moderate to moderate the Demonstration of Values, the story of fictitious corporation VCA Bike and Motorcycle that demonstrated how Tivoli can help businesses utilize existing resources to overcome business challenges in a tough market, launch new products on time within budget. Liz Smith then shared results from the 2008 CEO Survey, which collected input from over 1000 CEOs and Public Sector leaders worldwide to find out what they see as next major business impacts are and how that affects the enterprise of the future. Liz then introduced and explained the five entry points to Service Management: Discover, Monitor, Protect, Industrialize and Integrate.

Concluding Day One General Session was Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, but perhaps even more widely known as an individual dedicated to helping researchers cure cancer, inspiring all of us to have the courage to rise above lifes challenges. Lance candidly shared his personal story of how he discovered that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him in showing him that his life would only get better. And did it ever get better! Following his record-breaking athletic career, Lance redirected his passion for his work in becoming a leader and activist on behalf of cancer survivors around the world. Inspiring more than 50 million people across the globe to wear the yellow LiveStrong wristbands in support of people living with cancer, even more to volunteer in our own communities to affect positive change in the world.

I was unable to make the Business Partner Summit because I got into town too late - but I heard I missed one heckuva a time. Thanks to Felicity Carson for providing the following summary of the largest Tivoli Business Partner Summit to-date

Over 500 Tivoli Business Partners showed their commitment to IBM service management by attending the Pulse Business Partner Summit, making it the largest gathering of Tivoli business partners to date. Al Zollar opened the keynote address and thanked our valued partner community for their outstanding contributions to the Tivoli revenue and growth numbers. Alan Ganek, Bill Kribbs and Joao Perez presented the three key themes (Business, Skills and Revenue) to further empower our partners for growth.

The highlight of the Summit Keynote was the Tivoli Deployment Accreditation initiative where the first set of 85 Tivoli accredited business partners were announced. The Tivoli Deployment Accreditation initiative recognizes business partners who have made a significant investment in skills and certification by providing three levels of accreditationnamely A Level, AA Level and AAA Level. Titan Solutions and Streamfoundry (USA)

Absolutely now get the value of becoming a Tivoli Accredited business partner. Synnex and Ingram (Canada) said This event has delivered an opportunity for IBM Business Partners targeting similar markets gain value from sharing experiences

The Business Partner Summit concluded with a spectacular VIP Backstage Party for provided an excellent opportunity to relax and unwind and network with peers, executives and subject matter experts. Attendees from Apruycus (Netherlands) Love the worldwide village aspect and the opportunity to meet with business partners from Hong Kong, and around the world.

Al Zollar and Michele Grieshaber congratulated and recognized the accredited partners as well as the winners and finalists of the first ever Tivoli 2008 Business Partner Awards. Finalists and winners were selected from more than 40 outstanding nominations:

IBM Tivoli 2008 Business Partner Innovation Award

Winner:Pirean

Finalists:eSolutions

Finalist:ReachView

IBM Tivoli 2008 Service Management Award

Winner:generationE

Finalist: Toshiba Solutions Corporation

Finalist: Deloitte & Touche

In addition, over 50 business partners requested more guidance on Webcollage program that will enable them to directly syndicate Tivoli web content to their web sites.

For the past 7 months I have been leading a team of communicators all focused on introducing Pulse to the world, more specifically IBM clients and business partners. As I am preparing to leave for Orlando, I just cant believe that all the months of preparation are over and now its time to deliver what weve been promising as the Service Management event of the year.By the way if you or someone you know has not of heard of Pulse, I want to know your hiding place so I can visit when its time to invite the world to Pulse 2009. But for now, allow me the final indulgence of sharing what I find most exciting about Pulse 2008. . .

Pulse 2008 includes a compelling agenda of comprehensive education and unique networking opportunities. There will be everything from a full day dedicated to our business partners that includes an award ceremony, to industry user group meetings and analyst panels, to a social event a la speed dating with the best and brightest Tivoli technologists.There will be many announcements, including the launching of the 5 Entry Points to Service Management to help organizations jump start Service Management in their organization. I am also very intrigued by the buzz I have been hearing about the Tivoli-turned-IBM Software Group-wide initiative to build the greenest data center possible. I felt pretty good about reducing my carbon footprint when I started working from home and switched to curly light bulbs, but I can only imagine the difference a Fortune 500 corporation can make by mobilizing its forces to combat the global climate crisis.

Who wouldnt be jazzed about hearing what seven-time tour de France champion and cancer activist Lance Armstrong has to say? Why, I just realized that in addition to us both being Austinites, athletes, and parents, now Lance and I have Pulse in common too wait theres one more: I also hate cancer. Then theres John Wood, who left a wildly successful career at Microsoft to bring literacy to the third worlds children. This is one speech I have got to hear. . . I really want to know what motivates someone to trade in use of a private jet for a yak. And of course everyone has a favorite Hootie and the Blowfish tune theyll probably play mine at Pulse since I pretty much like all of them.

In addition to all of that I have already mentioned there will be so much more to experience. To help keep you informed during the event, we are deploying online community and social networking tools in a way that we have not done before at a conference. A bunch of us on the Pulse team will be blogging so come back and visit the Pulse blog often. We're looking forward to your comments. And be sure to sign up for the Pulse Twitter for mini-blogs throughout the conference. I really hope folks will take advantage of our online community and social networking tools during and after Pulse. This is really a topic for a separate blog but incase you were wondering, here are a few benefits the new online functionalitycan provide:

Make it easier to do business with IBM and community experts

Identify important business and IT trends and opportunities

Innovate and collaborate on business ideas and solutions that matter

Create long-term face-to-face and online connections

Facilitate knowledge transfer and skills training

Discover and leverage the wisdom of the community

See you all at Pulse, and remember . . . what happens in Orlando winds up on the Pulse Blog!